his elbows and saw the head of the C-4 scanner, its camera lenses pointed straight at him. A couple more feet of random velocity and it would have crushed him.
He barely had time to take this in before there was another explosion, this time from above. Paul craned his neck back as far as his helmet would permit and saw a small, stub-winged spacecraft racing across the sky, only a couple of hundred meters above the ground, its shadow passing over the ruined hulk of the autotank. Black smoke was billowing from beneath its wings; the craft canted sideways, out of control in a long downward arc, and disappeared from sight past the huge peak of the C-l Pyramid…
More gunfire. Unable to help himself, Verduin rolled sideways to stare in horrified fascination as another missile lanced Unit One. The autotank’s upper turret exploded and the mobile lower fuselage seemed to reluctantly collapse upon itself like the beheaded body of an animal. Maksim Oeljanov, making an ungainly struggle to his feet in his CAS, was raising his right-hand gun to take aim when a wide, dark shadow fell across him…
Bullets pocked the armor like hard rain. Oxygen-nitrogen spewed outward from the CAS like fine mist—pink-tinted white mist—as the Russian officer toppled backwards, letting loose a final bit of obstinate gunfire as he sprawled into the rocky soil. His body was lost in a dusty cloud as, a moment later, the second spacecraft whipped overhead, streaking against the setting sun into the dark sky.
The Greeks named this world after a God of War…
Paul Verduin watched it soar upward as he waited for the next missile, the next fusillade of 30mm shells. Yet there was peace now. The western wind slowly carried the mixed haze of red dust and black smoke away from the battlefield, and the fuel of the destroyed autotanks made a brief and futile attempt to burn in the sparse atmosphere. There was an unintelligible chatter of voices—unnoticed until now, but everpresent nonetheless—in his headset.
So what else should you expect…?
Verduin lay prone on the ground, feeling his body shake within the tight confines of his skinsuit. There was a stinging, acid sensation between his thighs where he had involuntarily pissed himself beyond the capacity of the suit’s urine-collection cup. He hardly cared. He watched the little spacecraft as it banked sharply to the right, turning around and coming back toward the base. In one part of his mind he knew that it was coming in for landing…but he instinctively waited for its pilot to train the cannon on him, where he lay helpless on the ground, and open fire again.
But he knew that wouldn’t happen. No. It wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t…
‘Get off my planet,’ he whispered again.
Excerpt from ‘Mars’, The Solar System, Volume 4), Time-Life Books, New York (2034)
The second expedition to the City found as many new mysteries as it did new discoveries.
The extraterrestrial explorers who had visited Mars in the distant past apparently never left the planet. Indeed, the red planet had become their final resting place. The giant D & M Pyramid was found to be an immense tomb, its interior catacombed with niche-like compartments containing their desiccated remains. Although only one intact exoskeleton of a Cootie—as the alien race was dubbed by the initial explorers—was ever found, this single specimen, along with fragments of others, was enough to provide Cydonia Base exobiologist Shin-ichi Kawakami and the science team with a near-complete picture of the physiology of the insectile aliens ( see fig. 3-8).
Why did the Cooties settle on Mars instead of Earth? And why did the aliens never leave Mars, but commit themselves to mass—and perhaps living—entombment within the D & M Pyramid? While there are several theories, the leading one was first propounded by Richard Hoagland, in the 1980s before the existence of the Face and the City was verified, and later tentatively supported by
He barely had time to take this in before there was another explosion, this time from above. Paul craned his neck back as far as his helmet would permit and saw a small, stub-winged spacecraft racing across the sky, only a couple of hundred meters above the ground, its shadow passing over the ruined hulk of the autotank. Black smoke was billowing from beneath its wings; the craft canted sideways, out of control in a long downward arc, and disappeared from sight past the huge peak of the C-l Pyramid…
More gunfire. Unable to help himself, Verduin rolled sideways to stare in horrified fascination as another missile lanced Unit One. The autotank’s upper turret exploded and the mobile lower fuselage seemed to reluctantly collapse upon itself like the beheaded body of an animal. Maksim Oeljanov, making an ungainly struggle to his feet in his CAS, was raising his right-hand gun to take aim when a wide, dark shadow fell across him…
Bullets pocked the armor like hard rain. Oxygen-nitrogen spewed outward from the CAS like fine mist—pink-tinted white mist—as the Russian officer toppled backwards, letting loose a final bit of obstinate gunfire as he sprawled into the rocky soil. His body was lost in a dusty cloud as, a moment later, the second spacecraft whipped overhead, streaking against the setting sun into the dark sky.
The Greeks named this world after a God of War…
Paul Verduin watched it soar upward as he waited for the next missile, the next fusillade of 30mm shells. Yet there was peace now. The western wind slowly carried the mixed haze of red dust and black smoke away from the battlefield, and the fuel of the destroyed autotanks made a brief and futile attempt to burn in the sparse atmosphere. There was an unintelligible chatter of voices—unnoticed until now, but everpresent nonetheless—in his headset.
So what else should you expect…?
Verduin lay prone on the ground, feeling his body shake within the tight confines of his skinsuit. There was a stinging, acid sensation between his thighs where he had involuntarily pissed himself beyond the capacity of the suit’s urine-collection cup. He hardly cared. He watched the little spacecraft as it banked sharply to the right, turning around and coming back toward the base. In one part of his mind he knew that it was coming in for landing…but he instinctively waited for its pilot to train the cannon on him, where he lay helpless on the ground, and open fire again.
But he knew that wouldn’t happen. No. It wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t…
‘Get off my planet,’ he whispered again.
Excerpt from ‘Mars’, The Solar System, Volume 4), Time-Life Books, New York (2034)
The second expedition to the City found as many new mysteries as it did new discoveries.
The extraterrestrial explorers who had visited Mars in the distant past apparently never left the planet. Indeed, the red planet had become their final resting place. The giant D & M Pyramid was found to be an immense tomb, its interior catacombed with niche-like compartments containing their desiccated remains. Although only one intact exoskeleton of a Cootie—as the alien race was dubbed by the initial explorers—was ever found, this single specimen, along with fragments of others, was enough to provide Cydonia Base exobiologist Shin-ichi Kawakami and the science team with a near-complete picture of the physiology of the insectile aliens ( see fig. 3-8).
Why did the Cooties settle on Mars instead of Earth? And why did the aliens never leave Mars, but commit themselves to mass—and perhaps living—entombment within the D & M Pyramid? While there are several theories, the leading one was first propounded by Richard Hoagland, in the 1980s before the existence of the Face and the City was verified, and later tentatively supported by
Similar Books
